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Digital Transformation Gets Real at SAPPHIRE NOW

While it may seem like digitization has gone from buzz to boiling in the blink of an eye, the truth is that the technologies underpinning digital transformation – cloud, mobile, big-data analytics and IoT – have had over a decade to emerge and evolve into the proven and essential status they hold today.

It is the maturity of these technologies -- along with the blistering rate of their adoption and the near-limitless promise of innovation they hold -- that marks a new era in enterprise technology -- one that will continue on for the foreseeable future, creating disruption and opportunity in equal measure.

As covered in a prior NTT DATA SAP Advisor blog post, across the board, industry pundits predict spending on digital transformation will remain strong in 2016, and beyond:

IDC predicts digital transformation to be a key strategy for 67% of the Global 2000 by 2018 and that by 2017, over 50% of the IT budget will be spent on new technologies.

Gartner “forecasts that 6.4 billion connected things will be in use worldwide in 2016, up 30% from 2015, and will reach 20.8 billion by 2020.”

Gartner predicts that “in 2016 5.5 million new things will get connected every day; and Internet of Things (IoT) will support total services spending of $235 billion in 2016, up 22% from 2015.”

As reported in Fortune, Forrester reports that software-related spending will increase 5.7% over 2015 to reach $600billion, with SaaS spending jumping 24% to $108 billion in 2016.

SAP – digital innovating at full throttle

Over the past few years, SAP customers have seen digital innovation coming from SAP at a faster clip than ever before.

Most impressively, with S/4HANA, SAP has brought digital to the core. SAP announced S/4HANA, the successor to SAP Business Suite, in February 2015, followed in May 2015 with the announcement of SAP S/4HANA, Cloud Edition. In November 2015, SAP announced a massive wave of innovation for S/4HANA, dubbed 1511, at SAP TechEd in Barcolona, effectively evolving S/4HANA into a complete ERP system. Most recently, SAP released three new SAP S/4HANA "1603" cloud editions that provide industry-focused capabilities for marketing, professional services and more general enterprise ERP needs.

For net-new SAP customers, S/4HANA is a no brainer. For existing SAP customers, S/4HANA is your future.

While SAP will continue support for existing ERP systems until 2025, customers are well advised to begin mapping out their journey to S/4HANA now. Waiting to become transformation road kill left behind by more digital-savvy competitors is not a sound strategy.

Customers call for partners who can handle it all

SAP partners currently manage more than 80% of all projects focused on SAP S/4HANA, according to SAP, and play a major role in selling the software and helping customers plan, run and optimize implementation and digital transformation projects.

Taking full advantage of S/4HANA, the cloud, mobility and advanced analytics demands working with a service provider with skin in the game, one with demonstrable success investing in and developing SAP-based solutions and services, carrier-grade datacenter and telecommunications infrastructure on a global scale, and the proven people, processes, methodology and business process expertise to tackle complexity and deliver innovation today and tomorrow.

Too often at NTT DATA we see companies fail in their digital transformation efforts because they either attempt to do too much -- a complete business model change -- all at once, or they do too little, paying what amounts to lip service to digital transformation by bolting digital technologies onto existing, rigid and inefficient business processes.

NTT DATA believes that the key to a successful digital business strategy is to focus on reimagining specific business processes to simplify and enhance customer interactions. The results are quick and attainable. Organizations see how business insight can best be leveraged to achieve the greatest impact across the entire value chain -- creating a clear path to achievable business results.

Meet with us at SAPPHIRE NOW and find out how we’re providing SAP customers (present and prospective) practical, clear-cut, strategically sound answers for how best to accelerate innovation across HANA, mobility, and the cloud to drive efficiency, productivity, competitiveness, and profits for their organization -- all while reducing costs, eliminating complexity, and laying the foundation for the future.

A selection of hourly presentations from NTT Group companies at our booth #123 includes: